The Scorpio Illusion (82 page)

Hawthorne raced ahead, down the long, wide hallway as the leader of the roving guard unit looked at his men and nodded. In seconds the four marines were flanking Tyrell, the captain beside him.

“What are we
looking
for?” the marine officer whispered breathlessly.

“A woman and a kid—”

“A kid … a little
kid
?”

“A big kid, a young guy in his late teens.”

“What do they look like?”

“It doesn’t matter, we’ll know them.… How much farther?”

“Right around the corner, a large door on the left,” answered the captain, gesturing toward a T-shaped cul-de-sac twenty feet ahead.

Tyrell held up his hand, instructing the others to stop and walk slowly as they approached the end of the hallway. Suddenly, there were voices, a cacophony of
“adios” “arrivedércis
,” and
“good-byes
,” followed by the appearance of three men in the opposite east corridor; two were dressed in dark business suits, the third in a chauffeur’s gray uniform and visored cap, all with plastic clearance tags attached to their lapels.

“Ashkelon
!” cried the chauffeur, addressing someone on the other side.

“Who the hell are
you
?” asked the stunned marine captain.

“FBI, assigned to the State Department for diplomatic security,” said the startled man next to the chauffeur, his eyes switching back and forth between the officer and the unseen figures emerging from the Oval Office. “We’re escorting the countess to her hotel. Didn’t the dispatcher alert you?”

“What
dispatcher? Bureau or no Bureau, where the Oval is concerned,
our
security calls me with a minimum P.M. lead time of an hour, it’s standard!”

“He’s lying!” mumbled Hawthorne, moving himself partially behind the marine as he pulled the automatic from his belt. “They used the name Ashkelon, and that means only one thing.…
Bajaratt
!” yelled Tyrell suddenly, whipping around and firing into the ceiling, instantly realizing how foolish the warning shot was.
Staccato gunfire erupted, the marine captain hit first, the blood spilling out of his stomach as the other marines spun into the hallway walls. The Ashkelons lunged backward, shooting wildly and shouting, intent only on pulling someone to them for cover while they minimized the crossfire. A mariné pivoted around the east corner and shot five rounds, felling the two men who claimed to be federal agents, one of whom kept firing from the fetal position as a woman dashed across the T-shaped cul-de-sac, screaming.

“Kill
him, kill the
boy
!” she shrieked. “He must not
live
!”

“Cabi … 
Cabi
!” came the screams from the unseen teenager beyond the corner of the wall. “What are you
saying?… Auhh
!”

A second marine guard lunged forward, firing two rounds, blowing apart the head of the chauffeur, who fell in Bajaratt’s path. Tyrell grabbed the second marine. “Get the President
out
of there!” he shouted. “Get
everybody
out!”

“What
, sir?”

“Just
do
it!”

Bajaratt shoved the falling dead body of the chauffeur out of her way, grabbed his gun, and ran down the corridor as the marine, joined by his colleagues, raced into the Oval Office. Hawthorne, his weapon extended, crouched and spun around, looking for the woman he once thought he loved but now hated, a serpent with glass eyes and a mouth filled with poison. She was nearing the end of the hallway! Tyrell sprang forward with such force, the wound in his thigh split open, the blood spreading throughout his trousers as he raced after her.

When he was halfway down the corridor, there was a massive explosion from the Oval Office. Horrified, Hawthorne whipped around, stunned by the smoke and the flying debris, then instantly relieved by the sight of blurred, excited figures on a lawn beyond an open side door at the far end of the hall. The marines had done
the job; the President and several others were running around in panic, but they were out of the White House, out of harm’s way. Spinning again, Tyrell was paralyzed—where was
Bajaratt
? She had disappeared! He ran, reaching a large circular room with three hallways beyond a wide staircase; she had chosen one of them—which
one
? Suddenly, sirens and ear-shattering bells echoed throughout the hollow caverns of the executive mansion. Then there were voices—screams, commands, mass hysteria—seemingly from everywhere and nowhere. And through the chaos a tall figure walked slowly down the staircase, a figure with one arm, his face taut, his eyes wide and bright, as a cruel man looks observing an act of brutality that excites him profoundly.

“It’s
done
, isn’t it, General?” shouted Hawthorne. “You really
did
it, didn’t you?”

“You
!” yelled the chairman of the Joint Chiefs as streams of marines and civilians raced out of the hallways, crossing the large circular room toward the Oval Office corridor, oblivious of the celebrated general and the bleeding man who limped to the staircase below the soldier. “And you were too late, weren’t you,
mister
?” Meyers moved his arm behind him as he stared at the gun in Tyrell’s hand. “I’ve faced a thousand weapons and none have ever frightened me.”

“You don’t have to worry about this one, General. I may blow both your kneecaps off, but I want you alive. I want the rest of your wriggling carcass for all the world to see—because I wasn’t too late. You
lose.
”

Without warning, without the slightest body movement, Meyers arced his arm from behind him, and in a single motion brought the blade of his bayonet slashing down across Hawthorne’s chest. Tyrell leapt backward, firing his gun as rivulets of blood spread throughout the shirt under his jacket. And General Maximum Mike Meyers fell forward down the staircase, most of his neck obliterated, a mass of white tissue and soaked, bright red flesh, his head more off the rest of his body than on.

Bajaratt!
Where
?

A gunshot—a scream! From the far right hallway. Dominique had killed again—no,
Bajaratt
!

Bunching his shirt together to absorb the blood, Hawthorne limped to the corridor where the shot and the scream had come from; the walls were soft yellow, the light from crystal chandeliers, not neon tubes. It was a short hallway with anterooms, probably for social functions, where invited guests primped for state occasions, two doors on the right, two on the left. There was no corpse in evidence, but there were blotched streaks of red, as if a body had been dragged into the second door on the right. A killer setting a trap had made a mistake that only another killer would recognize. In such a situation, one did not follow the blood, one looked in another direction. Tyrell sidestepped down the hallway, his back against the left wall, the wound in his thigh now draining profusely. He reached the first door and, summoning what strength he could, spun around, crashing his shoulder into it while twisting the knob with his left hand. The ornate room was empty, several full-length mirrors reflecting Hawthorne’s image; he limped quickly back into the hall, into the pandemonium of screaming sirens and deafening bells. He proceeded to the second door in the left wall; it was the assassin’s illogically logical sanctuary, he knew it, he felt it.

Once again, finding what was left of his reserves, he turned the knob and propelled his body against the door, sending it crashing back into the inside wall.
Nothing
!… Then, in a microsecond flash of understanding, he whipped around and lunged to the right—for knowing her pursuer, Bajaratt had
reversed
the trap! She came flying through the open door from the room across the hallway, half her clothes torn to shreds, her face the face of the demonically possessed, her eyes wild, her features stretched in fury. She fired twice, the first bullet creasing Tyrell’s left temple as he swung his head away, the second shattering a mirror on a dressing table, the third
attempted shot … a
click
. The gun she had taken from her fallen colleague was out of bullets.

“Shoot
!” screamed Bajaratt.
“Kill
me!”

Thunder cracked across Hawthorne’s mind, bolts of lightning searing his inner eyes, blinding his thoughts yet leaving him the torture of outer sight. Opposing wind shears of loathing and remembered love collided as he stared at the contorted features of the hellhound who had slept in his arms in another time, in another life. “Whom would I be killing?” he asked weakly, taking long gasps of breath. “Dominique or the terrorist they call Bajaratt?”

“What does it
matter
? Neither of us can live any longer, can’t you understand that?”

“Part of me does, another part isn’t quite sure.”

“You’re
weak
! You were always weak and filled with sickening self-pity! You’re
pathetic
! Go on,
do
it! Haven’t you the courage?”

“I don’t think courage has anything to do with it. It doesn’t take bravery to kill a quartered mad dog. But maybe it takes a little more courage to capture it, dissect it, and learn what makes it diseased. Also, to learn what other mad dogs travel in the pack.”

“Never
!” shrieked Bajaratt, flicking the gold bracelet on her wrist and lunging at Hawthorne. His thigh crippling him, Tyrell fell back under her attack, his strength sapped; he was almost no match for the maniacal strength of the fanatic. Then, as the gold bracelet came nearer his throat, blocked only by his grip on her wrist, he saw the open hole of a jagged gold point. It was dripping fluid meant for him. He fired. Into her chest.

Bajaratt gasped and rolled over, trembling in the rattle of death.
“Muerte a toda
—” The head of Amaya Aquirre fell to the right, into the comfort of her shoulder. Somehow, her face became younger, the lines of hatred diminished, a ten-year-old child at peace.

EPILOGUE